The State of Gaming in Japan 45
dean73 writes to mention an article at the SeekJapan site entitled The State of Gaming in Japan. The article runs down the seventh round of the console war from the Japanese perspective. IE: The one where Microsoft is probably going to lose. From the article: "The Xbox 360 comes to us now with a reduced price, a screwed-up slogan ('do! Game, do! Choice, do! Xbox 360') and a slew of games targeted at the Japanese audience. The trump card is Hironobu Sakaguchi: the Final Fantasy creator's studio, Mistwalker, is due to deliver the first of two Xbox-only RPGs, Blue Dragon, on December 7th. Given that the Xbox has until now lacked any decent Japanese-style RPG (the cocaine of the J-geek world), this might prove just the ticket, and Microsoft is predicting a big hit."
Re: (Score:2)
Most countries that don't use the Roman character set are still quite familiar with it. In fact, you'll find common examples of English in nearly every country in the world. It always amazes me when I'm given a box of candy from Russia that has the label in English. Go figure.
Re: (Score:2)
But it's because they don't have it in their language they're obsessed with it. The closest spelling I can get to it in romanised katakana is EKUSU. (that's three Japanese letters, E, KU, SU)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Others have already said that your idea that the Japanese are unfamiliar with the letter 'X' as preposterous. They learn English in school and are inundated with western media. Algebra doesn't get taught with just kana for variable names. They get it.
It is interesting to note that where many American quizzes refer to "true/false" questions, it's pretty common for a Japanese quiz to use a circle as "correct" and an X as "incorrect." I doubt that would become a negative product connotation (like the ap
Re: (Score:1)
Which seems to explain the UI logic of the PS2 in Japanese games, where the circle button confirms your choice and the X button cancels
"do! Game, do! Choice, do! Xbox 360"? (Score:2)
I wonder if the Japanese laugh at it and will use it as an inside joke like "all your base are belong to us"? Of course, perhaps they're more cultured and civilized than us.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't think this is a translation; I think this is the slogan. [famitsu.com]
In my experience from a few trips to Japan, it is very common to use weird English as product slogans. Most Japanese have enough high school English to understand a short slogan made up of common words, even if they don't speak it that comfortably.
Perhaps my favourite was a 7/11-type store that had the phrase "So Delicious! So Happy!" plastered all over its fast-food takeouts.
I no longer view this as badly translated English. It's really i
Re: (Score:1)
(the) Keyword (is) do! Game, do! Choice, do! Xbox 360 media briefing's (bunch of kanji I can't read)
So the slogan is probably closer to "The Keyword is do! Game, do! Choice, do!" than it is "do! Game, do! Choice, do! Xbox 360".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
do!Game, do!Choice, do!Live
The "do!XBox 360" is only in the title. The rest of the article (what I can decipher, anyway) dissects the three contructs above. Look a little lower, and you'll even see them each discussed in a table. It would appear that each "do!" is intended to represent some sort of attribute about the XBox 360.
i.e.:
do!Game - Possibly representing the game library available.
do!Choice - Possibly referring to "chosing" the hardw
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not claiming to know exactly what the real slogan is, I'm just guessing, so you may very well be right.
Re: (Score:2)
Perfect Gaming Forever. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They are to an extent more cultured, but more civilized is debatable.
Re: (Score:1)
Although, the latter point is pretty easy to explain away with Sony's much forg
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And I don't think it really matters - all this debate over the slogan is pretty pointle
intresting (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
DDR was "Novelty"
The DS was "Novelty"
Silly Slogans (Score:2)
I do hope their Japanese TV commercials do not end up like this [youtube.com].
And we make fun of the Japanese for translations. (Score:1)
But yeah, the 360 is doomed in Japan. Sure MS was touting the Blue Dragon 360 package sellout, but they only made a thousand of them.
Last week they sold 22,380 PS2's in Japan to Xbox 360s 1,287. (source [gamespot.com])
So while selling an extra thousand 360s is impressive for Microsoft, it's garbage for the market. Hell, most weeks there are more GBA new releases than Xbox in Japan.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, talk about obvious. Throughout this past generation, most weeks there have been more GBA releases in the United States than any of the three home consoles. The GBA has been monstrously popular all over the world and developers can make GBA games for virtually nothing compared to the cost of developing for home consoles (and, the [low] quality of GBA games, on average, tends to reflect this). It's looking more and more likely that
Umm, there were 100K created, not only a thousand (Score:2)
Ehh, you are incorrect. There were 100,000 bundles created [1up.com], with 10,000 of them being the limited edition versions (which are apparently sold out now).
Re:Umm, there were 100K created, not only a thousa (Score:2)
That will boost the Xbox numbers here by a lot, certainly there hasn't been anything like a Must Have Game for the 360 in Japan in the year since it launched. But if the only games they keep releasing here are translations of American sports and shooters, well, they're screwed, because those games just don't sell in Japan. Get some RPGs, fighting games, something based on a good anime franchise, a trading card game, or a port of a game-cen
Re: (Score:2)
The thought is that Blue Dragon, Lost Oddysey, and Eternal Sonata will be be a good kick-start to the Japanese RPG genre. Well, there's already one RPG, Enchanted Arms, which was surprisingly decent. (Certainly no Final Fantasy, but good enough to interest some fans. It's also coming to the PS3 eventually)
The problem with the 360 launch is that it takes
Re:And we make fun of the Japanese for translation (Score:2)
weird quote (Score:2)
"If [Steve] Jobs adds an Apple logo to the PS3, I think users will say it can be sold at $2,000. However it's not possible for the PlayStation brand. That is the difference in the computer world between the PlayStation brand and the Apple brand."
Ken Kutaragi, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO & President
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I believe that the gaming industry started in the US with Atari. In fact the US was the 'world center' of the gaming industry for many years until the crash of 83-84 when it shifted to Japan.
Re: (Score:2)
It's debateable where the gaming industry "started". Nintendo was making handheld and light gun games for longer than Atari even existed, for example. The Magnavox Odyssey is no doubt the first programmable home console, but in the modern era where the DS and GBA are the top-selling systems, I don't think you can say